Exterior Airflow Simulations Using a Lattice Boltzmann Approach 2002-01-0596

The purpose of this paper is to describe some of the technology behind the Lattice Boltzmann approach to exterior airflow simulations as incorporated into the commercial CFD code, PowerFLOW®. The fundamental approach used is the Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM) coupled with both a turbulence model to recover the dissipation of sub-grid eddy scales and a wall model to allow reduced resolution in the near-wall region. A description of LBM and both models is given. Comparisons to methods that directly solve the Navier-Stokes equations, such as finite volume or finite element methods (hereafter, collectively referred to as RANS methods) are also presented.

A demonstration of the technology is presented by comparing numerical simulations with extensive experimental test data on Ford's standard calibration models. These models were originally described in SAE paper 940323 [1].